Last updated at 12:15 PM on 25th November 2010
- 'Half of Lib Dem backbenchers could vote against fee rise'
But the Lib Dem leader claimed there was no alternative to his party's U-turn - and that the coalition's proposals were fairer than the graduate tax his party used to support.
Liberal Democrats have become a focus for student anger over tuition fees, so much so that Mr Clegg was told earlier this week not to cycle into work over fears for his safety.
The coalition is also facing an internal rebellion with MPs predicting as many as half of Lib Dem backbenchers could defy Mr Clegg and vote against the fee increase.
Lib Dem anger: Student protesters take their message to the streets of London yesterday
Lib Dem Deputy leader Simon Hughes has also said that he is still in the process of deliberations with his fellow party MPs over how to vote on a proposed rise in tuition fees.
But Norman Lamb, Lib Dem MP for North Norfolk, and the political advisor to Mr Clegg, has defended the fee increase: 'This is a completely different system, it's a fair system. The 25 per cent of graduates who will be on the lowest pay will pay less for their university education than they pay now.'
Personal fury against Mr Clegg though is growing. On Tuesday, protesters burned an effigy of the Lib Dem leader, chanting: 'Shame on you for turning blue' - and there were fears at one point that the party's Westminster HQ could be attacked.
Yesterday Mr Clegg issued a plea to students taking part in the protests to look at the details of the Government's proposals, which he insisted were fairer than either the existing regime or the graduate tax backed by the National Union of Students.
He came under flak from callers when he appeared on BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine Show while the protests took place.
One lifelong Lib Dem voter, Bill Price of Seaton, Devon, told Mr Clegg he had 'sold the Liberal Party for your own personal ambition' by going into coalition with Conservatives.
But Mr Clegg insisted that leaving the Tories to form a minority government would have been a recipe for instability and would probably have meant a second general election by now.
Challenged over why he was now backing tuition fee increases which he vowed to oppose during the election campaign, Mr Clegg said: 'Of course I massively regret finding myself in this situation.'
But he said that the fact the Liberal Democrats did not win the election outright, and that the country's finances were worse than they had anticipated, meant that they had to accept 'compromise' on issues like university funding.
Asked how it felt to see pictures of students hanging him in effigy, Mr Clegg said: 'I'm developing a thick skin.'
Hung out to dry: A effigy of Deputy Prime Minister is hung from a gallows as students stage a protest outside King's Place and Nick Clegg leaves his home yesterday
'But I nonetheless think that when people look at the detail of these proposals they will realise that all graduates will be paying less per month than they do at the moment and the poorest quarter will be paying much, much less and we will be making it easier for some of the youngsters currently discouraged from going to university to go to university.
'I hope that over time - perhaps not overnight - people will say: "OK, this was controversial, it was difficult for the Liberal Democrats, but actually they have put something into place which will finally allow our education system to do something which it hasn't done for generations, and that is to promote rather than thwart mobility".'
It was a 'scandal' that the two private schools Westminster and Eton - which he and Prime Minister David Cameron attended - provided more undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge than the 80,000-strong of disadvantaged pupils receiving free school meals, said Mr Clegg.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1332934/Nick-Cleggs-massive-regrets-broken-tuition-fee-promise-rebellion-grows.html#ixzz16IhDNIhU
